US must make own decision on pullout of troops, says BJP leader.
By Deepak Chitnis
WASHINGTON, DC: There is need to suppress terrorist forces in Afghanistan and its neighboring countries in the region in order to keep both the US and India safe in the future, said the BJP President, Rajnath Singh, speaking at an event on Capitol Hill.
The event, titled “Conference on Afghanistan and the Region: Security, Stability, and Prosperity,” organized by the US-India Political Action Committee (UCINPAC), was held at the Cannon Building in Washington, DC.
Other speakers at the event included: Congressman Ed Royce (R-California), who is Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee; Kanwal Sibal, former Indian Foreign Secretary; Hamrullah Saleh, former Head of Afghan Intelligence. Singh was the keynote speaker of the event.
“The entire world is one family,” said Singh. “India supported this US-led intervention into Afghanistan that deposed the Taliban and located al-Qaeda. Mumbai is always under attack. In 2008, 266 [people] were killed. India has enough evidence to prove that the perpetrators were from our neighboring country, Pakistan, [which was] also sheltering al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in Abouttabad. Unless the fundamental problem of safe havens for [the Taliban and al-Qaeda] is addressed, [they] will not be eradicated.”
Singh also urged the US to make decisions about its interests in the Afghan region, since the US is a dominant international player and must set an example for other nations to follow. He also stressed that Afghanistan and Pakistan were hand-in-hand in terms of harboring terrorist networks, and that the international community as a whole must take steps against them in order to prevent more acts of terror from occurring on any country’s soil.
“The US must make its own decision regarding the pullout of troops from Afghanistan,” Singh urged. “The ideology of terrorism, of religious hatred, violence and terror, oppression, [is] aggressively anti-democracy,” he said.
To contact the author, email to deepakchitnis@americanbazaaronline.com